Mega lo Mania / Tyrants: Fight Through Time (Amiga)

Developer:

Sensible Software

|

Release Date:

1991

|

Systems:

Amiga, Atari ST, Mega Drive, SNES, DOS, X68000, PC-98, FM Towns

---

Today on Super Adventures, I'm finally taking a look at classic Amiga strategy game MEGA lo MANIA (or Mega-Lo-Mania). It's also occasionally known as Tyrants: Fight Through Time in the US. It's never just called Megalomania, though maybe it'll help someone find this page on Google if I mention the word anyway.

This one's by eccentric British developer Sensible Software, creator of games like Wizkid, Cannon Fodder, Sensible Soccer and Sensible Train-Spotting, so I'm expecting to see tiny men running around the screen at some point. I should probably know already if they're in it as I've played the game before, but that was ages ago, I didn't play it for long and my strongest memory of it is being amazed that I actually worked out how to do something. It's one of those games where the first challenge is the interface.

Here's some random trivia for you: when Virgin Games published the game they decided to release a tie-in single called "Mega-Lo-Mania (Goin' All the Way)" to promote it. I don't think the song has any relation to the game or anything that happens in it, but it does have the same cover at least!

Okay I'm going to play this for an hour or so to see what it's like. Which means I'll either make it through a bunch of levels or just get really frustrated on the first one, depending on whether I'm able to figure any of it out. I actually started making some progress in Populous when I wrote about that, so there's always hope.

Small Saga (Demo) (PC) - Part 3 - Guest Post

Previously on the demo of Small Saga, our hero Verm and his new friend Siobhan had a disagreement with a cat and rescued a pigeon from a wheelie bin. Now airborne, the pair continue their journey to the rodent capital Murida.

Small Saga (Demo) (PC) - Part 2 - Guest Post

Previously on the demo of Small Saga, tragedy struck when mouse brothers Lance and Verm undertook a daring mission to steal from the gods. Who dares wield the Titan Reaper now?

Small Saga (Demo) (PC) - Part 1 - Guest Post

This week on Super Adventures, guest poster mecha-neko has decided to mix things up by writing about a game so new that it's not even out yet. It's indie RPG (rodent-playing game) Small Saga!

It seems like it's been nothing but drab sci-fi games forever around here. My previous post was dystopian misery in Crusader: No Remorse, and my next post is going to be a gloomy survival horror derelict spaceship thing. What I need is some wonderful, colourful, adorable game to lift everyone's spirits!

Developer:

Jeremy Noghani

|

Release Date:

March 2022 (Demo)

|

Systems:

Windows

---

It's time to play the brand new demo of Small Saga! Well, it's brand new to me. The Kickstarter ended three years ago, but this latest standalone demo was released this year. I was told there was a cat in it, and that's all I need to know.

Small Saga (Demo) (PC) - Guest PostPart 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

Alien Syndrome (Arcade)

Developer:

Sega

|

Release Date:

1987

|

Systems:

Arcade first, then almost everything else

---

This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Alien Syndrome! Because I've already played Alien Breed and Alien Storm this year, so I figured I might as well.

I did play this a little bit earlier this year when I was getting a screenshot for my Alien Breed article, but until then all I knew about the game is that it was a side scrolling beat 'em up where you zap aliens... or maybe an overhead view run and gun set on a space ship. The problem I had is that I always got it mixed up with Alien Storm, because they're both arcade games by Sega with gross-looking aliens in them.

The game runs on the Sega System 16B arcade board, which is kind of like the Genesis/Mega Drive's dad. That makes it a bit weird that it never actually got a Mega Drive port, especially as other games made for the board like Altered Beast and Golden Axe did. It didn't make it to the TurboGrafx-16 or SNES either and I'm not sure what happened there, as it was ported to basically everything else at the time. Seriously, this Sega game got a NES port.

But whatever system it's on, it's still an arcade game... which means it'll be really simple and extremely difficult. I'll probably play it for 10 minutes, get hopelessly stuck, and then struggle to think of anything to say about it. I should get some good screenshots out of it though.

Mega Motion (Amiga)

Developer:

Extend

|

Release Date:

1994

|

Systems:

Amiga, DOS

---

This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing... uh... I think it says Mega Motion?

Mega Motion is a budget-priced puzzle game that was originally released on the Amiga in 1994, late in the machine's run, and then two years later on PC, right at end of MS-DOS's run. It was developed by Extend, and it's apparently the only game they ever made.

I have played this one before, but it was years ago when I was a tiny baby and I haven't kept hold of many memories of it. I do still have a vague recollection of what you're supposed to do in the game, but what I mostly remember is that I was eating a pack of strawberry laces at the time. In fact it feels weird to play it without them.

Okay, my first observation is that they've used an extremely 80s snare drum sample in the theme music. The gated reverb is strong with this one. 

Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger (MS-DOS)

Developer:

Origin

|

Release Date:

1994

|

Systems:

DOS, Windows, Mac, 3DO, PlayStation

---

This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger! Not to be confused with 80s hard rock anthem Eye of the Tiger.

With a title like that you might assume that it's the third game in Chris Roberts' Wing Commander series, but developer Origin had been been busy in the three years since Wing Commander II, producing three spin-offs. There was Wing Commander Academy, which was basically a mission generator for WC2, Wing Commander: Privateer, a space trading/combat sim along the lines of Elite, and Wing Commander: Armada, a strategy game with dogfighting. Oh plus there was 1993's Strike Commander, which doesn't have anything to do with Wing Commander except the name, dogfighting, and it being produced by Chris Roberts at Origin.

I've heard a few numbers for how much Wing Commander III cost, like $5 million and $10 million, but $4 million seems the most plausible to me. Either way it was apparently the highest budget video game ever when it came out, which is funny considering that it's a space combat sim. It really shows how much things have changed since 1994. Oh hang on, I've just done the research and it turns out that the highest budget video game of all time is currently Chris Roberts' space combat sim Star Citizen, which has raised $400 million.

The reason this game cost so much is because the series had progressed from floppy disks to four CDs packed with live-action full-motion video, with real Hollywood actors. The game was meant to be taken seriously and required some serious hardware to run, like a Pentium-based multimedia PC with a good SVGA video card and a double-speed CD drive, or a 3DO console. A couple of years later it got a release on the shiny new PlayStation as well, but no Sega CD or Amiga CD32 ports for this one. It almost got ported to the Jaguar, Saturn and M2 as well, but those versions were later cancelled... and not because the game wasn't selling well. In fact this was a massive success despite the fact that so few people had machines capable of running it well, and they were soon making a sequel with an even bigger budget.

SPOILER WARNING: I'll be playing the first few missions and I won't be spoiling anything past that, but these are story heavy space sims and you might end up reading something here you don't want to know about the first two games.